Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Deep Thoughts XXXIV

8 comments:

I feel like a total dweeb for responding seriously to a funny post, but it honestly seems to me that H20 is clearly a molecule composed of obvious parts, where as water doesn't seem that way. Water seems like a substance without parts. Also, H20 doesn't flow or freeze or have surface tension.... Anywho....

Fair enough.... But, it seems to me conceivable that a large string of H20 wouldn't necessarily have these properties either (while "water" wouldn't be "water" if it didn't have these properties). I don't know....

I just ingested some hydroxic acid and I'm really tripping right now. So here is my hydroxic acid trip inspired comment. We've got some serious problems with the following substances Dihydrogen Monoxide, Oxidane, and Hydroxic Acid. These chemicals kill a lot of people each year who happen to accidentally inhale them. Also they are industrial solvents known to corrode most metals. Dihydrogen Monoxide, Oxidane, and Hydroxic Acid are the most frequently abused substances and are widely available. Every day kids bring these substances into our schools and no one seems to want to do a thing about it. Athletes use Dihydrogen Monoxide, Oxidane and Hydroxic Acid as performance enhancing substances. These substances don't show up on any drug tests and so athletes will test clean. These substances prevade all high school, collegiate, and professional sports, and even show up in Little League! Again no one seems to do anything about it and athletes just get away with using them. Race horses are given Dihydrogen Monoxide or Oxidane in substantial quantities. Every single Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont winner has been on them. Horse racing officials and the Jockey Club just don't seem to care. It seems like the jockeys are on that stuff too - what's good for the horse is good for the rider!! Dihydrogen Monoxide, Oxidane and Hydroxic Acid are also used in hookahs whenever shisha is smoked. Different religions and cults around the world use Dihydrogen Monoxide or Oxidane for initiation and worship rituals. We need to do something now before its too late. Maybe, or maybe I'll just put some more Oxidane into my CPAP machine for the night. My dreams tend to be sweeter.

My guess is that you came to this conclusion through something like the following line of reasoning:(1) Water is nothing but H20.(2) So, water is H20 (by "nothing but" elimination)(3) So, H20 is water (by the symmetry of identity)(4) So, H20 is nothing but water. (by "nothing but" introduction)

The problem is that "nothing but"-introduction is not a valid rule of inference. Now, you might think that both the introduction and elimination rules have to be valid, since "is nothing but" just expresses the relation of identity, so adding "nothing but" to "is" or subtracting it from "is nothing but" makes no difference to the content of the sentence. But I deny that "is nothing but" expresses the identity relation, since the is-nothing-but relation, unlike the identity relation, is non-symmetric. (There are crude materialists who think who think that love is nothing but a chemical reaction in the brain. Are we to attribute to such materialists the quasi-mystical view that some chemical reactions in the brain are nothing but love?)

Water contains H, OH, H2, O2, etc. These are not impurities, but essential components of the naturally existing substance we call water. Water is an ensemble, a statistical concept. Viscosity, conductivity, surface tension, phase changes, and other quantitative and qualitative bulk phenomena associated with water do not describe a single molecule of H20. These properties are only meaningful when H20 is present with the other molecular components of water.

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I am a philosopher at Baylor University. This blog, however, does not purport to express in any way the opinions of Baylor University. Amateur science and technology work should not be taken to be approved by Baylor University. Use all information at your own risk.